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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29188419">promises to keep and miles to go before i sleep</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/escapismandsharpobjects/pseuds/escapismandsharpobjects'>escapismandsharpobjects</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Young Wallander (TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Background Kurt/Mona, F/M, FebuWhump2021, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Hypothermia, I only put kurt &amp; reza since they're the only ones that speak to each other, Imprisonment, Not really but whatever, Whump</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-02-04</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-02-04</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-18 00:33:48</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,203</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29188419</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/escapismandsharpobjects/pseuds/escapismandsharpobjects</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>febuwhump day 3: imprisonment. kurt goes investigating and winds up trapped in a freezer.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Kurt Wallander &amp; Reza Al-Rahman</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>8</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>10</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>promises to keep and miles to go before i sleep</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>hi! for once i don't feel super rushed with this lol, even tho i started out thinking i was going to write a different scenario for a different fandom. anyway i hope that you enjoy this fic :)<br/>anyway i was gonna title this "imprisonment" (i am Amazing at titles) but then i thought this kind of fits lmao. so. title from stopping by woods on a snowy evening by robert frost. love that poem and here is some kinda shitty writing borrowing its lines. we wont think about it.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>Kurt </span>
  <em>
    <span>technically </span>
  </em>
  <span>should not be there, for a multitude of reasons. He was there for his latest investigation, without his supervisors’ permission. Or even their knowledge. He’d also promised Reza earlier in the day that he wasn’t going to do anything stupid. And he was supposed to be going out with Mona later that night. So he really shouldn’t have been doing this.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>But he’d had a feeling, back when this place had first come across their radar. A run-down (though still operational) meat packing facility, way on the outskirts of the city, owned by a known associate of their main suspect. It was the perfect place for him to conduct his rather disturbing business of killing people and freezing them until he had evidently decided what he was to do with them. (In the case of his first murder, it’d been dropping the body from the roof of an apartment building, and in the case of the second, setting the body up in a bus stop, as though it were a live person waiting to get to work. In other words, this shit was creepy as all hell (the general consensus of Kurt and his colleagues)).</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He stepped through the main door, wincing as it squeaked. He </span>
  <em>
    <span>really </span>
  </em>
  <span>hoped that no one was there to hear it. He moved further into the building, shining a flashlight in sweeping arcs across the unmoving conveyor belts and various deadly-looking pieces of machinery. He was looking for...</span>
  <em>
    <span>something.</span>
  </em>
  <span> He felt that he would know it when he saw it. He continued through the room until he came to a closed metal door with a frosted-over window that was cool to the touch. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>This was it, he was sure. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Something.</span>
  </em>
  <span> He paused for a moment with his hand on the handle, wondering whether he should call someone and let them know what he thought he’d found. Then again, he was here on a hunch only. If he turned out to be wrong, he’d be in serious trouble. Better to wait and see…</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He opened the door, which made a rather ominous creaking noise. A pass of his flashlight through the small room confirmed that his hunch had been correct: lying in the far corner of the freezer were two lumps, human-sized and covered in blankets. Kurt grimaced. Honestly, he’d rather have been wrong. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>But he’d been right, and now it was his responsibility to get people in here to deal with this. He pulled out his phone, adjusting his grip on the flashlight, and stopped. The light had illuminated something in the other corner: a large box, with what appeared to be a bloodstain on the bottom. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Something in him told him not to go see what was in that box, but something else insisted that he go have a look, so Kurt stepped into the freezer, pulling his jacket tighter around him. Just being inside, with less than a meter between himself and the door, was enough to make him shiver. He walked over to the box and shined his flashlight inside, thoroughly prepared to flinch back in disgust. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>But instead of something horrible, like body parts, there was...a case of beef. Kurt shrugged to himself. This </span>
  <em>
    <span>was </span>
  </em>
  <span>still a meat-packing facility, he supposed, turning away from the box and towards the blanketed lumps opposite him. He now doubted whether they were really dead people at all, or simply more meat arranged into vaguely human shapes. He </span>
  <em>
    <span>had </span>
  </em>
  <span>to check that out before he called anyone. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Kurt crossed the small room, shining his light on the lumps. There was no blood on the blankets, which he hoped was a good thing. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He reached down hesitantly, drawing one blanket away from whatever it was protecting. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Which was a dead guy. Pale as...well, death, his unseeing eyes covered in frost. Kurt let the edge of the blanket fall from his hands, stumbling backwards away from the body, nearly tripping over his own feet. He </span>
  <em>
    <span>really </span>
  </em>
  <span>wished he’d been wrong about this…</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Shaking hands reached for his phone, and he quickly dialed Rask’s number. She’d be pissed, no doubt, but once she got over it...well, they had two more murders and a hell of a lot more evidence on their hands.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>No service. Kurt sighed, his breath fogging up in the air in front of him, and headed back towards the door, which had at some point closed behind him. He grabbed the handle, wincing at the feeling of the freezing metal on his bare hand, and turned it, already redialing Rask. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It didn’t move. The door didn’t move. It was locked. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Kurt pulled at the handle harder. Nothing. He tried to push the door open instead. Nothing. He kicked it. Nothing. He was trapped. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>This can’t be happening,</span>
  </em>
  <span> he thought. But it was. He was trapped in a freezer in a meat-packing facility that served as some kind of hide-out for a killer, with two dead bodies and no service and absolutely </span>
  <em>
    <span>no one</span>
  </em>
  <span> that knew where he was. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>I’m going to die in here,</span>
  </em>
  <span> was his next thought. </span>
  <em>
    <span>I’m going to freeze to death. Or else I’m not going to die and the killer is going to come here to get his bodies and find me too, and </span>
  </em>
  <b>
    <em>then </em>
  </b>
  <em>
    <span>I’ll die. </span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He retried every single communication app on his phone, to no avail. The walls of his prison were too thick to let any kind of signal reach. He looked around for something he could use to break the door down, also to no avail, unless he wanted to try and use one of the dead people as a battering ram. He searched for any kind of interior controls that might warm the air or let him out. Surely other people had gotten stuck in here before. But there was nothing. He supposed those other people had gotten stuck during working hours, with their colleagues around because they hadn’t gone off on their own…</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>So that was that. There was no way out. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>And little point in telling himself not to panic.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He sunk down to the floor, taking no notice of its coldness seeping into his pants. He wrapped his arms around his body as tightly as he could, trying to keep himself somewhat warm. And then he panicked. His whole body shook with it, and with the cold, and the tears that fell down his face felt like they froze before they reached his chin. He was going to </span>
  <em>
    <span>die </span>
  </em>
  <span>in this</span>
  <em>
    <span> fucking freezer,</span>
  </em>
  <span> and it was all his fault...</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Eventually, slowly, the panic wore off. Kurt raised his head up from his arms, which were folded across his knees, still shaking hard, and got to work trying whatever he could. If he couldn’t get out of here, maybe he could at least prevent himself from freezing to death.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>First up was the flashlight. He thought that there might have been some way to start a fire with its batteries, but as he looked around he realized that there wasn’t anything to light on fire. Everything else in the freezer was, well, frozen, and his own clothes were damp and also the only things that would definitely keep him warm. A fire might burn out. Similarly, there was no sense in trying to smash his phone to light </span>
  <em>
    <span>it </span>
  </em>
  <span>on fire. Besides the issue of there being no flammable material with him, Kurt was pretty sure that if he ever got out of here, he’d need to call someone to get him. That left...nothing. Unless the dead people had something on them. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Kurt sighed. He did not especially like the idea of rooting around in the dead peoples’ clothes in an attempt to keep himself alive. Then again, they </span>
  <em>
    <span>were </span>
  </em>
  <span>dead, and certainly not going to object. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He pushed himself up off of the floor, taking a moment to force his shaking legs to cooperate, then walked back over to the bodies. The one he’d uncovered previously was dressed in a nice coat, and had a stick of gum and two receipts in his pockets, all frozen. The other body ended up being a woman, with a lovely-looking fuzzy hat on her head and a gold bracelet and two credit cards in her pockets. Again, everything on her was frozen. Kurt tried the hat out anyway. It was too small, and in any case made the top of his head much colder than the air alone. He covered the bodies back up with their crunchy blankets, which were yet again frozen and like ice against his skin. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Kurt sank back to the ground in utter defeat. The dead people had been his last hope, and unless he wanted to wrap himself in freezing clothes, they had nothing to offer him, except for a rather twisted form of company. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He was going to die. Well and truly. That settled, he grabbed his phone from where he’d set it on the floor, intent on writing out some final messages for the people he cared about. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>But his fingers were shaking too badly to even unlock his phone, let alone type on it. He let it slide back to the floor, then buried his face in his arms again and cried. He didn’t want to die here…</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>--</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Minutes or hours or days passed. Kurt was too cold to get his phone and check the time. He was feeling less and less alert, and his body ached from the constant shivering, and he wished that he could fall asleep. But every time he closed his eyes, they would open back up again, like they were telling him not to give in. He wished they would stop trying. He was dying. No sense in thinking that anything was going to save him.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>There was an ominous creaking noise in front of him. Kurt slowly raised his head, vision blurred from tears and cold, and saw that the door was open. He lunged for it, or rather tried to, but found himself quite incapable of moving. The door started to close, and he wanted to scream. It came out a quiet whimper. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>And then there was something touching him, something warm. He forced his freezing eyes to focus as best as they could. It was a </span>
  <em>
    <span>person!</span>
  </em>
  <span> He leaned into the warmth, unaware and uncaring of whether or not it was the killer, back for his bodies. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Then, the warm thing went away, and then it returned, draping something onto him. He wondered what it was, and then he was moving, and something </span>
  <em>
    <span>very</span>
  </em>
  <span> warm was pressing up against the whole right side of his body, and he knew instinctively that he was safe now, that the person who had him was going to make sure he would be okay. He finally fell asleep. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>--</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He woke up slowly. The first thing that he became aware of was the fact that he wasn’t cold. He wasn’t especially warm, either, but his body wasn’t shaking and he could feel his fingers and toes. There was something slightly scratchy covering him, and something cold pressed against his arm. He opened his eyes.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>The hospital.</span>
  </em>
  <span> He was getting tired of the hospital. He looked around, smiling at the lack of blurriness to the world. And then his eyes landed on three chairs that had been pulled up next to his bed. Empty. He wondered who had been there, and where they had gone. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He didn’t need to wonder for long, though. A nurse came up to him, looking very pleased to see him awake, and told him that his friends had gone to get something to eat, and ought to be back fairly soon.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>--</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Half an hour later, Kurt had been sufficiently fussed over by Reza and Jasmine and Mona, all three of whom had been incredibly happy to see him. Jasmine and Mona had gone to get all of them some hot tea (Kurt had shivered, just once, but it had been enough to prompt them into action), and Reza was looking at him in that rare way that meant they were going to have a Conversation.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Kurt-”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I’m sorry.” Kurt interrupted Reza before he got the chance to speak. “I should have told someone where I was going. I thought-”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Now it was Reza’s turn to interrupt him. “Kurt, you almost </span>
  <em>
    <span>died.</span>
  </em>
  <span> Touching you was like touching a block of </span>
  <em>
    <span>fucking ice.”</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You...you were there?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Who do you think found you? Mona called me worrying because you hadn’t shown up for your date, and she couldn’t reach you. Then </span>
  <em>
    <span>I </span>
  </em>
  <span>tried calling you. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Then </span>
  </em>
  <span>I tracked your phone and realized what stupid shit you were up to. I told Rask and she got some others, and we got there and I found you practically frozen solid.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Did you...see the bodies?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“See the- </span>
  <em>
    <span>yes,</span>
  </em>
  <span> we saw the bodies.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Kurt smiled. “Wasn’t for nothing,” he said, letting his eyes close. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Idiot,” Reza said, but Kurt could hear the fondness in his voice. “I guess there’s no point in asking you to promise me that you’re not going to do anything stupid again. Just call me next time, before you go and do it, okay? </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I will. I promise.”</span>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>ok i have Always wanted to write someone getting stuck in a freezer and this was really enjoyable to do!! i hope you liked it, please let me know if you did! also i am considering at some point writing a follow up to this from reza's pov bc i really wanted to describe like. how kurt looked when reza found him but i didn't want to suddenly switch to omniscient lmao. anyhow maybe lmk if you would be interested in that eventually? love u if u read this &lt;3</p></blockquote></div></div>
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